One of the more popular options available to users of Microsoft Corporation's XBOX™ game console is the ability to connect over the Internet to Microsoft Corporation's XBOX LIVE™ gaming service. Although the XBOX game console is a computing device that can be programmed to do much more than play electronic games, the game console is not provided with a web page browser program and is not designed for browsing web sites on the Internet, like a personal computer (PC). Instead, the game console is designed to connect via the Internet to the XBOX LIVE™ gaming service through a virtual private network (VPN) tunnel that provides a very secure communication link to enable user(s) of the game console to play online games with other XBOX game console users who are also subscribers to this online gaming service. The game console does not include any program for displaying a web page that includes hypertext markup language (HTML) code. To make a broadband connection to a local area network (LAN) for accessing the Internet, the XBOX game console includes an Ethernet port. This connection is intended to serve as the communication link for the game console to access the Internet through a digital subscriber line (DSL), a cable modem, or other network broadband connection. While certain games can be played at the communication speeds available through a plain old telephone service (POTS) connection, there is a benefit in requiring that all users use a broadband so that all users will then experience a similar low response latency and rapid download of data from the gaming service and from each other. For this reason, the game console is only able to connect to the XBOX LIVE gaming service through a broadband connection.
The growth of broadband connections for accessing the Internet has been remarkable; currently, a substantial number of homes in this country have a broadband connection for accessing the Internet. However, most homes do not have wired Ethernet networks installed. Instead, wireless (WiFi) networks have become very popular as an alternative to wired Ethernet networks for interconnecting computers and other types of computing devices in a home and for providing access to the Internet. WiFi networks offer a relatively low cost and effective alternative to installing Ethernet wiring throughout a house when creating a residential LAN. In a wireless network, a wireless base station or router typically has a wide area network (WAN) port that is coupled to a DSL interface or cable modem and serves as an access station for one or more computing devices that wirelessly connect to the wireless base station. Certain types of computing devices, such as game consoles, set top boxes, laptop computers, and other computing devices only have an Ethernet port for connecting to the Internet and cannot access the base station wirelessly.
To address this problem, several companies have developed wireless bridges that include an Ethernet port coupled to a radio with a wireless transmitter and receiver. The Ethernet port on the wireless bridge permits an XBOX game console or other computing device to connect to the wireless bridge via a conventional Ethernet cable and communicate over the wireless network through the bridge. An XBOX game console can thus form a VPN tunnel with the XBOX LIVE gaming service over the wireless network. Similarly, other types of computing devices with an Ethernet port can connect to the Internet through a wireless network using the wireless bridge. Example of such wireless bridges include D-Link Corporation's Model 810™ and Linksys Corporation's Model WGA54G™.
Each wireless bridge vendor will typically employ different setup techniques. For example, if a wireless bridge is used with a computing device that runs a web browser program such as INTERNET EXPLORER™ or NETSCAPE™, it is relatively straightforward to configure the wireless bridge produced by some manufacturers by entering a default network address assigned to the wireless bridge by its manufacturer in the browser program and then interacting with an HTML web page having appropriate dialog boxes or text entry boxes for entry of the parameters needed to configure the wireless bridge. The configuration web page and other related web pages are typically embedded in the firmware of the wireless bridge, along with the software for accessing these web pages for configuring the bridge. Since configuration of the bridge is done using a conventional web browser program, almost any PC that can directly connect to the Ethernet port of the bridge can configure it. Alternatively, for some bridges produced by other vendors, a wizard set-up program supplied with the bridge is run on a PC that is connected by an Ethernet cable to the bridge to configure the bridge for the user's wireless network. Typically, the configuration will require providing a name for the network, an Internet Protocol (IP) address for the bridge (if the network does not use dynamic host configuration protocol (DHCP)), a gateway, a domain name server (DNS) IP address, an encryption keyword (if used), and other parameters and options. Once the bridge has been configured using the PC, the bridge can be moved and connected to any computing device that cannot itself readily be used to configure the bridge.
Many people are confused by the two step process that requires a bridge to be configured on a PC and then moved and connected to an XBOX™ game console or other computing device that is not readily usable to directly configure the bridge. Accordingly, what is needed is an approach that enables such a computing device to configure the bridge itself, without the need to first connect the bridge to a PC for the configuration before moving the bridge to the computing device for connecting the computing device to the wireless network.
One approach that might be used to address this problem is to provide a plurality of different configuration programs on the computing device for corresponding bridges produced by different manufacturers. The computing device might either automatically detect the model (and manufacturer) of the bridge coupled to the computing device or require that the user choose the appropriate configuration program by input of or selection of the model (and manufacturer) of the bridge being used from a list. However, other manufacturers may enter the market with such bridges. Maintaining an appropriate configuration for each of a plurality of different bridges that may change as new models are added or as changes are required to address firmware improvements is clearly impractical. Instead, what is needed is a single user interface for configuring bridges made by different manufacturers that is not affected by changes in the bridge firmware or the release of newer models. It should be possible to employ this single user interface to troubleshoot any problems arising in the configuration and to provide help in answering questions about the parameters and configuration options that are required. Although this approach might initially be implemented on a specific computing device such as the XBOX game console, it will be apparent that the same approach might be used for other types of computing devices, such as set top boxes, or computers without provision for adding a wireless PC card or other type of wireless station device.